


you hear the day beckoning

by aceofdiamonds



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 20:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8300645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: you book your flight and you fly and you tell toby to think about that ninth year because love bartlet as you do, this isn’t the end for you or your party. 
josh on the santos campaign and everything that comes with that





	

**Author's Note:**

> this comes from the way josh sometimes looks at matt and the way i feel about matt and it all kind of ran away from me. it's about some unrequited love but also josh wanting to win for matt more than anything. title is from come back home by two door cinema club

 

 

 

donna’s gone and that’s half of it — no, you know not to underestimate her, that’s probably most of it. when your constant is gone everything else shifts out of balance and, not to have illusions of grandeur, but the world seems to shift a little. 

you fly to houston on something a lot bigger than a whim. you fly with that weight in your chest that leo has always described to you, the one you hadn’t known you were dreaming about until you all but stumble upon him on a stem cell bill. it’s damn near poetic the way that fills you up and then you’re watching the future unfold in front of you and you worry that you’re not going to be there to shape it. 

you book your flight and you fly and you tell toby to think about that ninth year because love bartlet as you do, this isn’t the end for you or your party. 

call me matt, he says. call me matt call me matt call me matt and you can’t do that, you can’t do that at all, because already boundaries are blurring as you wade into these unknown seas with this man by your side who has enough visions to change the world three times over if only he had the money and power to do it. but that’s your job. you’re the one who stands by call me matt, no, congressman santos, and you’re the one who has to snap like a bulldog because you want to win so badly you can feel it choking you. 

you think you want something else too and this is where donna comes in, your shining assistant who blinded you for so many years and now you're up here in new hampshire, in iowa, in illinois, and you think, pathetically and all too honestly, that this is the longest you've been without her.

you fight with your best friend over him and that’s when you know you can’t go back and that’s when you know this is it for you, all that ride or die you’ve been saying from the start cementing in your heart.

with donna gone your system short-circuits and you start making wild fantasies built upon the success of your campaign and matt’s strong shoulders and the buckets of charm that would rival josiah bartlet’s. 

“do you want to kiss me?” you joke, the repertoire too easy between you, and matt laughs, backs into a lift, both of you high on your opponents’ failures and your own successes. “do you want to kiss me?” you joke and your mind blanks and it's only when lou makes another one of her witty one-liners that you roll your eyes and step back. 

helen, your future first lady, you think, with all your fingers metaphorically crossed, sits you down a few days before the dnc, grabs and demands a few moments of your gold-dust time. you collapse on the couch and you listen and you try to answer correctly because helen has a wit sharper than you know what to do with and the steel to do what she wants with it. 

“josh,” she says, “do you really think he can do it?” what she's really asking is if you think you can do it because matt santos was born to lead this country, it's just a matter of getting him there. 

_ i love him _ you almost say as though that might have something to do with the exhaustion that has been clinging to your bones for weeks now and the stinging of your eyes from watching vinnick coax their voters over the party line. you almost say love as though love can be used in something like this when the love you're talking is what would break this campaign past repair. you think you want to say you love him because every day, edging above the policies and the tactics, you want to see matt smile and for his eyes to light up hungry for the win. 

“he's ready for this,” you tell her instead. you think you're ready for this too because this campaign has stretched out, you've been top of this race for a year now, and there's no stopping you. you like this roller coaster feeling. 

when you win the dnc at the expense of will, donna, and a veep you don't know if respect more than the last one, matt climbs down from his speech that wakes up the nation, leo by his side; he hugs helen, his kids, and then he throws an arm around your neck, pulls you in for a hug that crushes personal lines in a way you don't want to linger on. you clap his back, grin a little manically when he pulls back, but that's always your look these days so no one looks twice, and everything keeps happening. 

when donna climbs back onto your ship, you don't show that you miss her at first, because you're petty and you don't want someone who worked for the enemy -- no, not even the enemy, for bob fucking russell, being the voice of matt. but you get ignored as the disgruntled ex-boss and donna shines and everyone falls into her orbit, rightly so. 

“i missed you,” you admit, but it's not really an admittance with them, always a fact. 

“josh,” she says, voice soft. “i know.” 

with donna back it’s a little easier to keep everything in check, if only because she provides you with a cooling-down, with a place to ramble, to listen, to strategize. with matt you like to have your words perfect when you burst into the room, the illusion of spontaneity and recklessness, but with donna, bright shining donna who has made so much more of herself than you were ever willing to give her -- she might be more than your assistant now but she still sits there, clipboard across her knee, laptop in her eyeline, and she gives the illusion of listening as you rant until you run out of steam. 

you want to tell her. you want to blurt it all out in a scene that you don't want to rival a romcom but probably would. you want to say, “isn't the congressman great? isn't he going to go places? did you hear that i love him?” 

you're not sure if matt knows. he's clever, you see, and clever people always see so much more than anyone thinks -- you've been there, you know how it feels to always be noticing too much. you like to think there's nothing obvious about it, that your heart isn't thumping out of your shirt in a cruel cartoonish parody, or that, in the softer moments, your face isn't falling into an easiness that would give matt the world, should he ask. you've always worn your heart on your sleeve, your mom says, and here's where it's your detriment.

you power through the days in a whirlwind of red bull, coffee, and a maniacal wish for another four years of democrats in the white house under a president who lives and breathes the goodness of the country. you pull eighteen hour days that leave tempers frayed and a shakiness that doesn't leave your hands for days on end. you think that no one else is sleeping either because the congressman has dark circles under his eyes that you pretend show that he cares too much about america but have the danger of making him look overtired, overworked, overeager. you think that everyone is strung this high because why wouldn't they be but halloween rolls around, jon bon jovi climbs aboard, and the night is a catastrophe of fatigue and problems too close to the nation voting. 

after this mountain, matt finds you the next day, a week away from their future. he says, “i’m sorry, josh. when i signed up for this i didn't think about my kids loading up on candy with jon bon jovi.” he picks the smallest issue of the night, takes to confronting it side-on, unlike the way he usually tackles things. 

you play along. there wasn't a need for forgiveness here, anyway. this is the way campaigns work -- things implode and then things improve. “i couldn't have warned you about that, congressman,” you say, mirroring the wry smile he gives. “everyone’s okay?” it's a loaded question, of course, but then they all are. 

“a temporary setback,” he reassures. “helen will be glad when this is over, if only to get a semblance of control back in our lives.” 

“this time next week, congressman,” you promise, “this will all be worth it.”

“call me matt, josh,” he tries one more time and you just shake your head and rub a hand through your hair, you still can't do that even though you've been calling leo leo for as long as you can remember. “thank you for this. i know you've worked yourself into the ground but i want you to know how much i appreciate you finding me in houston and dragging me along for this.” 

“i know a good man when i see one, matt. this has been all you,” and maybe that's touching on too much but you can't remember the last time you slept. 

matt grins. “you'll help me in there, josh?” neither of them mentioning the white house, that's an age old jinx that no one breaks but it's okay to allude to it. 

“that's my second home,” you laugh. “i was finding a way in there no matter what you asked.” 

“you're my inside man,” he says, standing up, signalling the end of this quiet moment in the middle of the final week’s chaos. “if you're not there how will i find my way around the maze?” 

“okay, matt,” you say, the name sitting on your tongue. “i’ll help you out.”

you've never been huge on religion, not after the way your family has been treated by some higher power, but when the results slide in on election day and it's too close to call you clench your blue pen in your fist and you pray with everything you've got because if vinnick wins, if vinnick shows america a republican president who isn't against half the things they're known for, matt’s finished and so are you. 

while this is going on, down the hallway, in a room by himself, the man you call a father dies. leo has been your number one supporter since you came out of the office one day and said you wanted to be involved in politics, you want to do something about this country before it runs itself into the ground. 

while this is going on, and you're wasting your prayers on a man you have all your hopes pinned on, you don't have a thought for leo mcgarry, the man behind the best decisions america’s made in the last eight years, no offence to bartlet. 

when it's all over, when you've won, and half the room have lost their voices, matt finds you in the crowd, jerks his head out into the corridor. 

“i’m sorry about leo,” he says, the tone of his voice deep and, with a thrill inappropriate for the time, presidential. 

“yeah,” you say, shuffling your feet and trying not to relive the way you collapsed on donna’s shoulder earlier. “me too.”

“he was a good man,” and that's what everyone says but you know coming from him that it's true as it comes. 

after your official appointment in your role as matt’s guide, in the role you’ve been waiting for for the last eight years, never ready for it until now, you stand in the crowd as matt santos takes the oath of the most powerful office in america and you cast aspirations of what you'll do as chief of staff, a role that has always seemed hectic, controlled, mayhem all at once. it's a role for you. 

you remember jed bartlet saying something about making your best friend your chief of staff. you wonder what your relationship is with call me matt president santos. you don't know him the way leo knew bartlet, not yet, but you like to think that you could sit with a beer together, now that the first hurdle is over, now that your brain isn't focused on that one single goal. 

you’re not here to cast unrequited romance over your vision in a way that might inhibit your work, no, this thing you haven’t isn’t love, you know that now that you’re standing on the other side of election day and everyone’s emotions have tampered back down to manageable. you lock away those thoughts you have about kind smiles and broad shoulders and flashes of brown skin. those thoughts don’t fit here -- you take them away from the foreground and deal with them in gritty bars and discreet clubs, the normal way in this city, in this business. you turn your heart down and you focus on that brain of yours that got you into all of this. you’ve never been very good at balancing the two of them together.

so you have four years to do things with this country. you know how short those four years can be, eight go by somehow even quicker, but you and matt are going to sit down and plan and you're going to put matt’s almost wildly idealistic ideas into motion. you're here for the congress fights and the house stubbornness -- that's what matt’s got you for. 

you stand in the january sun, watch your hard work come to fruition. after the oath, matt finds you in the crowd and smiles, a happiness matching the achievement swelling up until it almost chokes you. you want a lot, you always want more than you have, but right here, in this moment, you’re where you’re supposed to be, and your heart can take that.

 

 


End file.
